Lifting the Winner's Curse

Updated June 13, 2002 12:01 a.m. ET

It's known as the "winner's curse," and as Bhaskar Chakravorti wrote on these pages in 1999, it dates at least as far back as 193 A.D. In that year, Didius Justinius won the auction to become Roman emperor, only to be beheaded for his trouble two months later.

They're not beheading Europe's mobile-phone operators yet, but many of them would be forgiven for feeling victim to a winner's curse after collectively shelling out some &euro;100 billion for licenses that now burden the balance sheets of European...